Fire again claims a mountain gem

Darren Gray

RUSTY, twisted and scorched they hang across the green fern gully like three abandoned flying foxes, or droopy power lines in need of poles. They run through the air in a curve for about 20 metres, from a blackened trestle above the creek across to the west bank of the damp gully.

More than 800 metres above sea level, in a steep forest in the Great Dividing Range, they dangle incongruously - three buckled old tram tracks to nowhere. But in earlier times, they were a lifeline for remote mountain communities.

Once, they turned and climbed through the Rubicon Forest for 10 kilometres or so, linking hydroelectric power stations and sawmills that were scattered through the bush near Alexandra to the outside world.

For years these mountain tram tracks were the only mode of transport in and out of the remote forest for the many power station and mill workers and their families who lived here.

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The heritage-protected trestle bridge, built in the 1920s to serve the Rubicon hydroelectric scheme and rebuilt in the 1960s, was in use as recently as the 1990s as power station workers travelled along it undertaking checks and maintenance on an aqueduct that runs alongside the tramway.

The hydroelectric scheme is still in use today, delivering about 0.02 per cent of Victoria's electricity. But four-wheel motorbikes have replaced the old tram carts.

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Like many bush relics that give an insight into how earlier generations lived and worked, the Beech Creek trestle bridge was hit by the February bushfires. It was destroyed by the Murrindindi blaze about a week after Black Saturday.

Elsewhere, many other historic sites have actually been revealed by the fires - as the undergrowth was burnt.

Further down the ranges at the ''Clark and Pearce No. 2 Mill'', the fires have revealed an old steam boiler that was used to generate power to cut logs, giant chains to shackle timber, bricks from houses and office buildings, long bolts and frayed steel cables.

In remote locations across the state the bushfires have exposed a vast array of relics such as old township sites, graves, tools, mine shafts and even old plane crash sites near Mount Disappointment.

In recent months, staff from the Department of Sustainability and Environment and Parks Victoria, along with volunteers from the Light Rail Research Society of Australia, raced against time to locate, inspect, photograph and document historic sites before the bush reclaimed them.

Inspecting the Beech Creek Trestle Bridge, DSE senior forest ranger James Cowell expresses admiration for the unique curved design and for the pioneers who built it nearly 100 years ago.

''I think they're a gorgeous structure. It's an engineering feat to build such a large structure in such a remote location. This was without cranes and 'dozers. The original bridge was built with bullocks to pull the cables,'' he says.

DSE forest planner Emily Borton says she was saddened when told that the trestle bridge had been destroyed, but she hopes it can be rebuilt.

''It burnt during the 1939 fires and it was reportedly rebuilt in 10 days after the '39 fires. And it was rebuilt again in the 1960s,'' she says.

''I think they're definitely very beautiful. It's in such a steep gully and it's very unique, you don't see many of them around any more. And the fact that it lasted for so long, they obviously knew what they were doing.''